


Pretty Broken Things

by sellswordking



Category: The Hobbit (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everybody Dies, Angst, Character Death, M/M, Post-BOFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:39:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sellswordking/pseuds/sellswordking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Company of Thorin Oakenshield is in broken, tattered pieces, and none dare speak the word victory after the battle of five armies. Ori knows that he is not the only one to have lost, but seeing past your own grief is always easier said than done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretty Broken Things

When they reclaim Erabor after the battle, no one dares to speak the word ‘victory’. It is not only the Company of Thorin Oakenshield that has lost, but they are a broken lot who feel the ache perhaps more than any. What started as twelve proud dwarves, one unwilling hobbit, and a wizard who never knew when to keep his meddling out was now a shattered rank without a captain, and without their numbers.  
  
Thorin Oakenshield, the one that should have been their next king, lay dead in the wake of the battlefield with his beloved halfling buried next to him. They had died in one another’s arms, as all the _tragic_ love stories foretold. Kili and Fili, the young heirs of Durin, also perished in the slaughter; they had been found reaching out for one another.  
  
Gloin fell for Oin’s sake beneath a goblin blade, and left behind his young son and wife to mourn.  
  
It was an arrow strayed from no one knew where that pierced Bifur’s throat, finally felling the warrior who had survived such awful battles before.  
  
Nori and Dori . . .  
  
Ori didn’t like to think of their bodies, ripped to pieces before him, though the ache of his lost leg often reminded him. They had rushed to save him, all the good that he had been, when a warg had grabbed him by the leg, and they were _lost._  
  
All had been taken from them, no man or elf or dwarf coming from the battle unscathed. Nor was Gandalf, who said not a word before setting out on the road.  
  
Balin took the throne of Erabor in spite of the fact that he had wanted nothing less, and gave a good bit of the wealth away to help with the rebuilding of Dale. He was, in few words, what Thorin would have been, had he lived to see his kingdom reclaimed. No one said the words, but all knew that he strove to make the line of Durin proud, and have it endure.

And as for Dwalin, well.

It was Ori who did what needed to be done, in the end. Dwalin stood at his side when they took his leg, and Ori wished that the dwarf had left him alone for it; wished Dwalin would give him anything to hold on to, just a bit of hate or spite to make it easier. As he had always been, Dwalin was kind and gentle and willing to hold him through his recovery and up until he learned to walk on the iron replacement that had been made for him.  
  
When Ori left, still unused to his prosthetic, he was only able to get as far as Dale on his own.  
  
( _“Marry. Have children. Carry on the line.”_  
  
 _“Ori, how could you think I--”_  
  
 _“It’s not about you, Dwalin. Nor me, not anymore. We all sacrifice what we have to now.”_ )  
  
Dale was fine to settle in, and it seemed he was not to be alone in those of the company who were unable to leave this wretched, blood-soaked palace of ghosts.  
  
Ori took up with Bofur, helping to make furnishings for the houses that were being rebuilt, and toys for the children that were slowly coming back to the city. They worked around one another's grief, and Bofur was kind enough to hold him up as he continued to mend. When Bombur came to visit, Ori played servant and did not listen to them cry over their lost cousin, but was pulled into Bombur's wide arms, kissed on the head and held like a dwarfling as he was consoled for his own lost family. A moment later, Bofur was at his back, closing him in warmth that reminded Ori so starkly of the way his brothers used to hold him that the careful mask he had put in place cracked and fell away, and  _finally_ the ice melted away and Ori allowed himself his tears.  
  
It took such a short amount of time after that for he and Bofur to fall into bed together that Ori was almost shocked. Then again, he supposed grief would drive one to do stranger things than seek comfort in one who knew such pain. They would both ignore the other’s admissions; Ori would pay no mind to the way Bofur shut his eyes and treated him as if he were a much smaller, more delicate creature from a hole in the ground, and Bofur would simply look away from the way Ori bit his lip to keep the name of the warrior he had given up inside.  
  
In that time, Ori never so much as looked at a book twice. He never touched a quill if he could at all avoid it, and a single pot of ink would last him weeks when it used to cost him all his coin for a single week’s supply (that oft would not last a week). He hid his tomes at the bottom of chests and in the backs of closets neither he nor Bofur used, and there was no end to which he was grateful for the fact that the dwarf never asked him if he would one day pick up his silly old hobby.  
  
For years they were together, muddling along doing what they could to keep bread on the table. It reminded Ori of what life used to be like in Ered Luin, and somehow, that came to be a comfort. Bofur and Ori began to shape their lives into something _normal_ , and even managed to stumble to an existence where they could look one another in the eye in bed, and rarely were forced to remember those they loved and lost to climax.  
  
Bofur was a loving dwarf, warm and nurturing through the winter months when it became harder for Ori to move about but far from treating Ori as if he were still fresh from his swaddling clothes. Ori wished with all his heart that they had been born to another life where they might have even fallen in love, but the air of content between them was enough.  
  
And then word came down to Dale that Balin would travel to Moria to reclaim what was theirs, and all who could aid them were welcome along.  
  
Without a word, Ori packed his things.  
  
Bofur cried, but Ori knew the tears weren’t for him--just for another thing lost.  
  
Crippled and long since barren inside, Ori held a leather book of blank pages to his chest and made his way to Erabor on his pony for one last journey.


End file.
